“In a move to improve its bottom line, Dell is changing its shipping options for its low-end desktop and notebook computers, ending a promotion that offered free shipping to customers’ homes,” Red Herring reports. “The policy, which goes into effect October 10, encourages buyers of the company’s least expensive computers to go to the post office to pick up the boxes if they still want the free shipping. It is part of a “hold for pickup” program launched by the U.S. Postal Service Thursday.”
“Dell, like many computer makers, has been cutting back on prices to ship more units and grab market share. But the severely reduced prices are cutting into hardware makers’ profit margins,” Red Herring reports. “Dell PCs lately have been suffering in consumer ratings of reliability and service, according to BusinessWeek. Complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau increased 23 percent in 2004 compared to 2003, and rose another 5 percent in 2005. The company’s customer satisfaction rating also fell 6.3 percent to the industry average of 74 in a survey by the University of Michigan.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Get free ground shipping on all in-stock orders totaling $50 or more at the Apple Store.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple continues to lead in customer satisfaction, Dell loses more ground – August 16, 2005
Apple Macintosh leads in personal computer customer satisfaction – August 24, 2004
Apple Macs top PC Magazine’s ’17th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey’ – August 10, 2004
Mac—Free shipping.
More importantly…
Mac = Not Dell
Ahh, Good times.
So now people will have to pay to have lightbulbs (sorry, dell xps laptops that is) delivered to their house… poor chaps!
no free lunch
Dell to customers: “Hey ****nut go pick it up yourself, shithead!”
LOL Isn’t it kind of pathetic that the free shipping is cutting into their profits that much? We can only hope one day Dell will drive itself out of business.
Dell charges for shipping.
Uh, so?
Might as well tell me Hillary Clinton will be charging those who vote for her.
So what?
I’ll poop in a plastic bag and send it to you free of charge. Looks like my poop finally has an advantage over Dell (barely).
Now you know why Apple doesn’t play in the low margin arena.
Dell has realized their fate, the fate that happened to IBM, to Compaq, to Gateway and the rest. They race to the bottom in price, sacrificing quality, playing on the customers desire for cheap cheap cheap and wind up getting a name for themselves as a garbage generator.
Dell has recently introduced a line of rather expensive PC’s, hoping to grab some of the high end market, but it’s already too late. The word is out, Dells are cheap garbage and everybody knows it.
Anyone who is anyone with brains and cash buys a Mac, plain and simple, nothing Dell can do about that. Perhaps why Dell was hoping to sell a OSx86 for Apple. (fat chance Michael Dell)
So now Dell’s star is fading, just like all the other PC makers before them, soon they will be not making a profit like HP, Gateway are and IBM was. (they sold their PC division)
The time is right for Apple to take over, with Dell in decline and Microsoft barely breathing.
Tired of pop-unders?
Add this (or any url) to your /etc/hosts
0.0.0.0 ads.adsonar.com
0.0.0.0 js.adsonar.com
0.0.0.0 z1.adserver.com
0.0.0.0 media.fastclick.net
By following these instructions
http://dreamlight.com/insights/bugs/Apple/lookupd.html
Apple survives by providing the best computers for the best people.
The rest can go to D-Hell.
😀
This is why Apple doesn’t play in the low margin area of the computing market. When you race to the bottom on price to increase market share, you lose quality, support and innovation along the way.
If they need to cut down on free shipping what Dell was making out of its cheapo PCs? Few bucks here and there?
Looks like they cut as much in the past as to be selling at a loss now are selling now at a loss.
Dude,
one thing that needs to be proved yet is whether Dell ever had quality support and innovation.
That would be the revelation of the year…
sorry for the above post: MDN, prune it
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MDN word “human” as in Errare humanum est
Hold for pickup is actually a good idea. How many of us are at work and not able to be home to get delivery anyway?
And Apple offer´s “free shipping”? Attention Macwidgetheads – there is no such thing as “free” anything. You are paying for it one way or another.
Dell has always had a shipping price here in the Netherlands (well.. those times I did check) and a very hefty one too! 80 euros usually! In the small print of course. Oh, and clicking on a link on the Dell site of inexplicably increases the price of the product on the next page. Dell is very good at very cheap selling techniques. Bleh!
MW ‘through’ as in ‘I see right through Dell!’
“A good reputation is more valuable than money.”
[Publilius Syrus (1st century B.C.), Roman writer of mimes. Sententiae, no. 108.]
“Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
[William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Cassio, in Othello, act 2, sc. 3, l. 262-4.]
Perhaps now you know the foundation of Steve’s decision not to follow the industry’s lemmings of conventional design and marketing. You will never be noticed if all you do is add to the dull din of the background noise; the grey fog of conventionalism.
This can be very good advice for your own life, too.
Very well illustrated here…
http://homepage.mac.com/gmadigan/iMovieTheater33.html
I have to say that Dell really has managed to make itself into a poor commodity product that anyone with a choice would avoid. What’s astonishing is that they never realised this until it was too late.
Again, the cheapness -and ugliness- of the box for me reflects the complexity -and ugliness- of the software on which it runs…
Hey MacAnimal,
Not once have I ever gotten a pop-under or pop-up on my Mac. I’m curious what settings/browsers people are using to get them?
“With a high price you only have to apologize once, with low quality you have to apologize forever.”
Jump wrote “Not once have I ever gotten a pop-under or pop-up on my Mac. I’m curious what settings/browsers people are using to get them?”
I use Safari and got tired of turning Javascript off just to visit MDN to avoid the pop-unders. I need javascript for other sites all the time.
I have Safari’s pop-up blocker on obviously.
I could use another browser, (firefox has been having security issues) but I think it’s important to hit sites with Safari to tell them Mac users are still alive and doing well. 😀
I think Dell should close its doors and divide the money up between all its stockholders.
Most people I have spoken with buy Dells not because they are so good, but because they are so cheap. Then many of those complain that they are having “computer problems” which are really Windows-related problems. They complain that they have to pay $90 or so for snotty support from Dell and I’d dare say that most of their support calls are either user related or Windows related in nature.
So this whole cheapo (low quality) is coming back to bite Dell in a big way: when you make a product as cheaply as humanly possiable, quality suffers big time. Plus this whole other related subject with Windows is a double whammy.
I’d love nothing more (aside from an end of war and world hunger) to see Dell and Microsoft be crippled.
However a lot of folks will continue to buy Dells because it is so cheap and Windows “is the standard.”
Well boys and girls, cheap is never good…time to have better standards.
Shiny.
Beleaguered Dell.
DAMN I’ve been wanting to say that!!!
Seriously though, I don’t think Apple makes much profit on Macs either. The difference is, Apple is an innovative company that has several other revenue streams (iPod, software etc) to supplement its Mac sales. Dell is just another box maker with nothing else to fall back on.
to your home to fix your broken Dell (which is likely since Dells break down so much more than Macs).
Or else he’ll charge you because really you just had virus #8567387.
“Seriously though, I don’t think Apple makes much profit on Macs either”
You’re joking, right?
No, not joking. The situation might have changed with the recent sales growth, but before the iPod phenomenon Apple was only turning a profit through some creative accounting. They were breaking even on Macs at best.
in london visiting and of course just went to see the apple store on regent st, its a sunday and the place which is two stories is absolutely packed with people.
the pc store down the road has just a guy picking his nose. and that was the owner.
yup you pc guys really are where its at.
a good side note, at the store they offer free courses on finalcut and imovie etc, with free wireless, its fun to see the guys using dells trying not to look at the presentation and trying not to look like they arnt fully pissed they cant do whats on screen. super funny stuff. hehe.
Um, what’s with all this “Dell is the most successful computer company in the world” crap?
You mean the Wal-Mart model doesn’t work as well as the Costco model?
No wonder Wall Street doesn’t like Apple and Costco. The companies survive and aren’t sucked dry by stockholders? Spreadsheet jockeys don’t win every argument?
Who’d a thunk.
Bozos.
every whooping success in business, whether it be sears, montgomery ward, ford, general motors, sony, microsoft, dell meets its maker when they fail to see the markets of the future and prepare to take a dominant stake in them. apple made the same mistake back in the 80’s before they were a whooping success ( i believe that’s one of the reasons they are still in business). i think at steve jobs has learned this lesson.
the reason most dominant successful companies have such a hard time sustaining their success is the management team and the board stop doing their jobs and start watching quarterly and annual financial performance. these are just metrics of how you executed a plan in past reporting period. they do not speak to the quality of your plan looking forward. analysts are constantly trying to make that assessment, but but most of them fall very short.
cutting you costs to the bone leaves nothing else to cut. that is dell’s dilema. they are not selling innovation they are selling low price and low quality. my take on what’s going to dramatically change the landscape in this market is when computer functionality becomes something more life impacting than email or playing games and you start depending on it for things that are more important to you. then not having your dell work is a much bigger deal. don’t laugh, but when your media center craps out or becomes clogged with trash that you can’t watch the deciding game of the world series, you will toss that cheap device in the dumpster and get one that works.
the only thing saving dell from that today is media center functionality sucks. when sony fixes that, then the light of reliability will shine on the hardware and dell will look pretty bad.
apple’s future looks bright because people have an expectation that the apple procducts will work. hope they are up to the task.
there was also a comment on mac’s not having margin. don’t forget that part of apple’s strategy is not to depend on just one stovepipe for margin. they have the hardware, software and delivery stovepipes to manipulate. no other company can do that. the only company that can come close is google with it’s emerging desktop to replace windows (that will run on anything that will run linux) and huge delivery network. they are apple’s real competitor.
I think Dell is going to have bigger issues once Xbox 360 hits the market … not because I am a fan of MS (I am most definitely not) … however, I can see that the Xbox will have some functions beyond gaming that I am pretty sure M$ will be able to market to many as a computer replacement.
Attention People: Dell does offer free shipping! You just have to go to the PostOffice to pick it up – so what is the big deal???
It is a new program started by the Post Office.
And in the price of your Mac or iPod you are paying for shipping. If you don´t think so then you are the fool.
So next time when you go buy your Apple product at the Apple store or some other retail place and pay the same price as me who buys online through Apple you are paying for delivery because you went and got it (paying over $2 a gallon for gas), plus paid the same price as me who gets it delivered to my door.
If Apple did away with its “free shipping” and did what Dell is doing all the same people here that make snide remarks about Dell would be applauding and praising Apple´s wise move to try to cut costs to boost its bottom line and increase its stock price.
And for all you accountants that think Apple makes big profits, read Apple´s balance sheet – it is amazing how much interest and revenue one generates from having $6Billion sitting in the bank – which is what makes up a good percentage of Apple´s profits.
Apple makes good margins on all it’s products, or it just doesn’t sell them. Market share is important to them, but so is also getting repeat buisness and staying in buisness.
I have bought Mac’s all these years, they are worth my cash.
I have used Win PC’s, but never will spend the money on one.
Apple financial reports are publicly available. Go and have a look. Nope, I am not doing you the favor to directly provide you the link: learn to search and do research by yourself.
Apple makes quite a profit on Macs and it is the largest voice of their income, beating iPods and related music products and interests from existing cash.
Shees some people
I really doubt that ‘Hippo Crittz’. Personally, I’d rather have the product come to my house than have to go out of my way to go to the Post Office.
Just because it’s Dell doesn’t mean Mac users will blindly bash them. Honestly, I think the new XPS Notebook has some good specs (nVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX – DROOL!!) Too bad the computer itself sucks (design-wise).
As far as Dell and design go (I can’t believe I used those two words in the same sentence), one only has to go to http://dellditty.com to see why people make fun of Dell.
You’ve got to be either in poverty or a loser to buy a Dell.
iPodder: Macs still make up the bulk of Apple’s REVENUE, but not PROFIT. They might have decent margins but there are still operating costs to consider. Plus the prices have been forced down in recent years by the overall PC industry price wars. Apple has only been making hefty profits since the iPod boom.
Apple’s CFO is on the record as saying the company wants to become less reliant on hardware sales for its profits (iPods notwithstanding). That’s why I think it’s inevitable that Mac OS X will one day be licensed out.
Alas you won’t be able to run it on a Dell because there may no longer be any around …
Sure MacJack, but Apple is the one hw manufacturer with the highest margins. iPod has been fantastic but on it alone Apple has no legs. HW sales rose over 30% and are no less than profit from iPod.
Dell does sell good monitors. I brought one to go with my mini. Apples monitors look good but cost way to much.
I agree, although Dell isn’t running specials anywhere near as good as they were a few months ago. The same 20″ widescreen LCD I bought from Dell in April is $130 more now, even when it’s on sale.
Hopefully Mac sales will continue to rise at the current price points. I guess the fact Apple is opening so many retail stores means it intends making computers for quite a few years to come.
NoFreeLunch:
“And Apple offer´s “free shipping”? Attention Macwidgetheads – there is no such thing as “free” anything. You are paying for it one way or another.”
If I go to my local Compusa and buy a 20 Gig iPod, i pay $249 plus TAX (about $20). If I buy it on-line from Apple.com, I pay JUST $249. Let’s see, $249… $269… HMMM… APPLE pays for shipping, not me.